My Week on Wednesday… December 4

 

 

 

 

Welcome to My Week on Wednesday… where I take a few minutes to share some of the things I did, and learned throughout the week. And, especially, some of the blogs I visited and articles I read.

As you may know, last week’s My Week on Wednesday existed only to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving… so some of what I’m going to talk about today is sort of old news.

For example (as I posted on my Facebook Page last week) I have a pet snail. Yes… really.

A couple of weeks ago—just as it started to get really cold—I found a snail in my shower. I’m not really sure how he got there… but the fact was that he was there, and to remove him from the house would kill him. And I didn’t really want the death of a snail that wasn’t hurting anything on my conscience… so I left him there. I admit, I did sort of expect him to die. Only he didn’t and just crawling around my shower doing snail things… which, apparently, include cleaning the grout. (Now, before you judge me too harshly on the state of my grout, he is a small snail, and the grout is about 75 years old, and not really up to a vigorous scrubbing… or really any sort of scrubbing…)

So now I had this snail in my shower cleaning my shower. How cool is that? Cool enough, apparently to get around the, Ick! I have a snail in my shower!  part. I came to regard him as sort of a boarder… We weren’t friends, he remained nameless, he just did his job, and I tried not to step on him. Then everything changed. I was washing my hair, and I accidentally knocked him into the water. And there he was, swirling around by my feet… and without any thoughts of ick! or slime! or yuck! I reached down and scooped him up. (I may have even cooed at him just a little bit before safely setting him on the ledge.)

His name is now Maurice. Don’t judge me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In other exciting news, I made a very successful pie crust this year using this recipe–I used coconut oil (instead of Crisco) and put the flour in the freezer for a couple of hours before I started baking–and my crusts were beautiful!  (Okay, I admit it… I was a big fan of the Pillsbury pre-made crusts. It goes without saying that I don’t use them anymore… but last year’s pie crusts were pretty horrible!) I’m actually thinking about making pies with some regularity now!

My Start Your Day Off Right Cafe Latte was one of the most popular posts on Nourishing Joy’s Thank Goodness It’s Monday and was also one of the featured posts on Real Food Forager’s Sunday Snippets! Very exciting!

Also, my Divine Hot Chocolate (with Red Wine) was featured by Anjanette at Raising the Barrs as her favorite drink recipe from all the Wellness Wednesday Link-up posts for the whole month of November. What an honor!

 

 

 

 

 

The cold weather, and all this talk of warm drinks, sent me on a search for some more warm drink recipes, and I found this Healthy Salted Caramel Latte recipe from Wellness Mama, and a Chocolate Chai Tea Latte from Home with Purpose, both of which sound amazing! I can’t wait to try them out!

And this eggnog ice cream with raisin rum sauce from One Acre Farm… which doesn’t really have anything to do with warm drinks, but used some of my favorite words like “eggnog,”  “ice cream,” and “rum” all at once! 🙂

My post last week was Roast Chicken with Brussels Sprouts–yummy! And this week I wrote about 7 Gift Ideas for the Real Food Person in Your Life… a post meant to be shared with the people who look at you like you’re nuts when you talk about Real Food. Maybe they will learn something… or, maybe, at least they will get you a nice “real food” gift!

And the day after Thanksgiving, our Elf on the Shelf
arrived… and wrapped all our Christmas and Holiday books… get the list of books, and hear more about our tradition in my post 26 Books to Help Celebrate the Return of Light.

 

 

 

Finally, I found this useful post from Whole New Mom explaining how to substitute sweeteners. With a ton of holiday baking in my future, this is going to be invaluable!

I hope you all have a wonderful week!